Of all the beautiful things which are to be seen in shop windows perhaps
the most beautiful are those luxurious baths in white enamel, hedged round
with attachments and conveniences in burnished metal. Whenever I see one of
them I stand and covet it for a long time. Yet even these super-baths fall
far short of what a bath should be; and as for the perfect bathroom I
question if anyone has even imagined it.
The whole attitude of modern civilisation to the bathroom is wrong. Why,
for one thing, is it always the smallest and barest room in the house? The
Romans understood these things; we don't. I have never yet been in a
bathroom which was big enough to do my exercises in without either breaking
the light or barking my knuckles against a wall. It ought to be a _big_
room and opulently furnished. There ought to be pictures in it, so that one
could lie back and contemplate them--a picture of troops going up to the
trenches, and another picture of a bus-queue standing in the rain, and
another picture of a windy day with some snow in it. Then one would really
enjoy one's baths.
And there ought to be rich rugs in it and profound chairs; one would walk
about in bare feet on the rich rugs while the bath was running; and one
would sit in the profound chairs while drying the ears.
The fact is, a bathroom ought to be equipped for comfort, like a
drawing-room, a good, full, velvety room; and as things are it is solely
equipped for singing. In the drawing-room, where we want to sing, we put so
many curtains and carpets and things that most of us can't sing at all; and
then we wonder that there is no music in England. Nothing is more maddening
than to hear several men refusing to join in a simple chorus after dinner,
when you know perfectly well that every one of them has been singing in a
high tenor in his bath before dinner. We all know the reason, but we don't
take the obvious remedy. The only thing to do is to take all the furniture
out of the drawing-room and put it in the bathroom--all except the piano
and a few cane chairs. Then we shouldn't have those terrible noises in the
early morning, and in the evening everybody would be a singer. I suppose
that is what they do in Wales.
But if we cannot make the bathroom what it ought to be, the supreme and
perfect shrine of the supreme moment of the day, the one spot in the house
on which no expense or trouble is spared, we can at least bring the bath
itself up to date. I don't now, as I did, lay much stress on having a bath
with fifteen different taps. I once stayed in a house with a bath like
that. There was a hot tap and a cold tap, and hot sea-water and cold
sea-water, and PLUNGE and SPRAY and SHOWER and WAVE and FLOOD, and one or
two more. To turn on the top tap you had to stand on a step-ladder, and
they were all very highly polished. I was naturally excited by this, and an
hour before it was time to dress for dinner I slunk upstairs and hurried
into the bathroom and locked myself in and turned on all the taps at once.
It was strangely disappointing. The sea-water was mythical. Many of the
taps refused to function at the same time as any other, and the only two
which were really effective were WAVE and FLOOD. WAVE shot out a thin jet
of boiling water which caught me in the chest, and FLOOD filled the bath
with cold water long before it could be identified and turned off.
No, taps are not of the first importance, though, properly polished, they
look well. But no bath is complete without one of those attractive bridges
or trays where one puts the sponges and the soap. Conveniences like that
are a direct stimulus to washing. The first time I met one I washed myself
all over two or three times simply to make the most of knowing where the
soap was. Now and then, in fact, in a sort of bravado I deliberately lost
it, so as to be able to catch it again and put it back in full view on the
tray. You can also rest your feet on the tray when you are washing them,
and so avoid cramp.
Again, I like a bathroom where there is an electric bell just above the
bath, which you can ring with the big toe. This is for use when one has
gone to sleep in the bath and the water has frozen, or when one has begun
to commit suicide and thought better of it. Apart from these two occasions
it can be used for Morsing instructions about breakfast to the
cook--supposing you have a cook. And if you haven't a cook a little
bell-ringing in the basement does no harm.
But the most extraordinary thing about the modern bath is that there is no
provision for shaving in it. Shaving in the bath I regard as the last word
in systematic luxury. But in the ordinary bath it is very difficult. There
is nowhere to put anything. There ought to be a kind of shaving tray
attached to every bath, which you could swing in on a flexible arm,
complete with mirror and soap and strop, new blades and shaving-papers and
all the other confounded paraphernalia. Then, I think, shaving would be
almost tolerable, and there wouldn't be so many of these horrible beards
about.
The same applies to smoking. It is incredible that to-day in the twentieth
century there should be no recognised way of disposing of a cigarette-end
in the bath. Personally I only smoke pipes in the bath, but it is
impossible to find a place in which to deposit even a pipe so that it will
not roll off into the water. But I have a brother-in-law who smokes cigars
in the bath, a disgusting habit. I have often wondered where he hid the
ends, and I find now that he has made a _cache_ of them in the gas-ring of
the geyser. One day the ash will get into the burners and then the geyser
will explode.
Next door to the shaving and smoking tray should be the book-rest. I don't
myself do much reading in the bath, but I have several sisters-in-law who
keep on coming to stay, and they all do it. Few things make the leaves of a
book stick together so easily as being dropped in a hot bath, so they had
better have a book-rest; and if they go to sleep I shall set in motion my
emergency waste mechanism, by which the bath can be emptied in malice from
outside.
Another of my inventions is the Progress Indicator. It works like the
indicators outside lifts, which show where the lift is and what it is
doing. My machine shows what stage the man inside has reached--the washing
stage or the merely wallowing stage, or the drying stage, or the exercises
stage. It shows you at a glance whether it is worth while to go back to bed
or whether it is time to dig yourself in on the mat. The machine is
specially suitable for hotels and large country houses where you can't find
out by hammering on the door and asking, because nobody takes any notice.
When you have properly fitted out the bathroom on these lines all that
remains is to put the telephone in and have your meals there; or rather to
have your meals there and not put the telephone in. It must still remain
the one room where a man is safe from that.